


my words are my faith, to hell with our good name

by smallredboy



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, First Kiss, Getting Together, House Being House, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Transphobia, Lack of Communication, M/M, Minor Allison Cameron/Robert Chase, Not Beta Read, Outing, POV Alternating, Trans Robert Chase, season 3-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:15:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29927067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallredboy/pseuds/smallredboy
Summary: House grows curious when he learns that Chase hasn't actually slept with anyone in the hospital but Cameron. He concocts a plan to know just what's up with Chase, but it all blows up in his face horribly when he accidentally forces Chase to out himself as transgender.
Relationships: Robert Chase/Greg House
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	my words are my faith, to hell with our good name

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A New Chapter in the Book of Friendship](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14820354) by [Schattengestalt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schattengestalt/pseuds/Schattengestalt). 



> thank you to Schattengestalt for giving me the green light for writing a house/chase fic inspired by their fic! it lives completely rent free in my head and i had always been fiddling with a similar concept, so i asked them if i could and here it is now!
> 
> completely not proofread. sorry for any continuity errors, spelling mistakes, etc. i'm lazy and this fic is way too long for that.
> 
> enjoy!

House hired his team, for the most part, out of curiosity. They all had interesting qualities to them—Cameron was a doctor when she could be anything easier, Foreman's past was shrouded in mystery and bitterness, and Chase was... well, Chase was the most mysterious one by far, even as he wore his emotions on his sleeve. _What_ had his father done to him, exactly, for him to treat him like that when he came to see him? Why had his father not talked to him for over a decade but had called House to try and get his son a job? Most importantly—why did Chase have a reputation as a casanova, when he tried to investigate and found that he had not slept with a single person in the hospital other than Cameron? He had spent a good amount of time joking about Chase being a slut, and to learn that all the sexual encounters he was aware of were a) him sleeping with Cameron while they were both high and b) the fact he went to BDSM parties was maddening.

"Why do you let me call you a slut if you're not actually sleeping around?" he propped the question at Chase during off time, when everyone was dispersed all over the hospital, so they wouldn't hear him question their colleague and inevitably step in. Especially Cameron, the one who probably knew what was up with Chase's mysteries and wanted to keep it as hers. 

"I'm not a fan of work affairs," he drawled in his stupidly thick accent, looking away and fiddling with his hands.

"And yet Cameron happened," he pointed out. 

Chase looked anxious, nibbling on his bottom lip. He was delightful in his aura of attractiveness, dragging anyone into men in, House included. It was hard to deny that he wasn't too into the idea of listening to Rowan Chase's plea of getting his son a job until he saw him in the pictures, that cute little twink with a bright-white smile. 

"We were both under the influence," he replied. "Why do you care, anyway?"

House shrugged. "Simply curious. Most people in this hospital who are sexually active sleep with people in the hospital at least once while completely sober. I've done it, Wilson's done it, Cuddy's done it."

"What, did you have a threesome?" Chase shot back.

House rolled his eyes. "Yes," he answered without missing a beat. "Anyway. I just think it's weird, that's all."

Rumors spread like wildfire in PPTH—if Chase _had_ slept with a nurse or an intern or even one of the surgeons, it would've quickly made the rounds. But there was nothing, not a single peep. After asking some nurses about it, they did give out that he tended to be flirty, but took no time at all to fall through on any actual plans of any sort. Usually, he'd joke about how the bug of commitment issues had infected Chase after being in contact with Wilson, but there was something odd about this. He could sniff it out.

"Is it?" He huffed. "Not everyone thinks constantly about their employees' sex lives, either. That's weird as hell."

"Not everyone is saving lives on the daily," House replied, but it lacked any sort of weight to it. "Tell you what. Come to my place on the weekend."

Chase blinked owlishly at him. "Is that your way of seeing what I'm up to sexually? Sleeping with me?"

"Nah. You're not really my type. Too short."

Chase let out an undignified squeak. "I'm not that short—"

"You are," he replied. Chase was, in fact, quite short, sitting at five-foot-five. "But I know you're too much of a kiss-up to deny my offer, now, aren't you?" A pause. "Not that I'm going to force myself on you or anything. Just watch Real Housewives, eat Chinese and see how the night develops."

"Of course Cuddy hasn't slept with you in ages," he said. "Your flirting is atrocious."

"Would you prefer I bought you dinner?"

"I'd prefer if you discarded the idea of us sleeping together to begin with," he snarked. It had a lot more bite than usual for Chase, and House stared at him, tilted his head slightly. The problem, what made Chase so mysterious and also actually not a slut (or at least not a slut in the hospital) must have to do with his body, in some way or another. "But we can spend time together, I guess. It won't hurt."

House hummed. "Sure. That works. I'll have the Chinese, you just come as you are to my doorstep on Saturday, gotcha?"

He'd have to cancel on Wilson, but that was fine. His reaction when he finally told him what was up with Chase—a mystery that he had often rambled to him about when there weren't more mysteries in his line of sight—would be glorious.

* * *

Chase was growing more and more anxious as the weekend approached.

House had suddenly gotten a keen interest in his sex life and questioned him because he didn't sleep with anyone in the hospital except for Cameron, which was a high fling they both were okay with. And Cameron was a decent enough person to not out him to everyone. Everyone else, though—he didn't know them all that well, and for all he knew he could come out to one of the nurses he flirted with and the whole hospital would know by the next day's noon.

He didn't want House to know. Or anyone to know, really, but especially House. He had withstood jokes about people like him and dealt with the way he treated that intersex model. He dealt with all that because he was his employee, but also because he had a puppy crush on House. With any other man, he liked to think he would get over him as soon as the T-slur slipped past his mouth, and yet—and yet he was there, pining over him like a lost dog, watching, expecting treats that would never come.

He had done all in his power to keep being trans from the general public. He sealed his medical records, he erased any mention of his birth name from the Internet, he was as stealth as he could be. And if it all went tumbling down because of a hookup it wouldn't have been worth a damn, so he kept his mouth shut and his pants put on. Sometimes he fucked around in Grindr, but there the stakes were a lot lower—he wasn't a well known doctor by any means, and he kept it on first name basis only. That way, they couldn't put the pieces together from Robert, the cute twink from Grindr to Robert Chase, the fellow under Gregory House unless they really tried. And it hadn't blown up on his face yet.

He drew in a breath as he stood in front of the door to House's apartment. He wondered what he would do, really: had he gotten a whiff to where his problems laid and would poke and prod until he broke? Or had he not, and would ask increasingly personal questions until he gave up? Maybe he was wondering if it had anything to do with his dad. It was always either him being a slut or him having palpable daddy issues. He often threw it back onto House, accusing him of having daddy issues, and that made him shut up.

He knocked on the door and there was House, handsome as ever. He was smiling, an unusual sight, and beckoned him in. He walked in and took the sight of House's place in—it was a bit of a mess, but it wasn't too bad. He followed House's lead to the couch. There were two Chinese takeout boxes on the table and two glasses full of beer. Chase wasn't too big a fan of drinking, memories of his mother plaguing at him, but he could drink socially. He let out a sigh and settled down on the couch, not wanting to pick apart the takeout just yet.

Real Housewives was running in the background and he tried to watch it, but he was too pressed with nerves to really pay attention to what Jacqueline's husband was putting her through or whatever. House made small talk, clearly trying to lull him into a false sense of security before he started throwing questions at him. But Chase knew House—he knew what would happen, that he'd press at something until he got what he wanted out of him. Maybe he should just lie, invent something that would get House off his back. But nothing came to mind.

"Oh crap!"

Chase was pulled out of his anxiety-laden thoughts by the feeling of warm ramen on his lap, followed immediately by a cold beer. He hissed and his eyes widened as he stared at House, who was trying to seem apologetic—but he knew already that it was on purpose. That he somehow _knew_ , that he knew it had to do with his junk and was trying to get him to undress by any means possible.

"What the Hell's wrong with you?!" he exclaimed.

"The box slipped," he explained, like it was a completely reasonable thing to happen, "and I didn't want you get burned, of course, you'd get time off if you did, so I threw my beer at you."

"You wasted perfectly good beer on me not getting burned by _lukewarm_ ramen?" He stood up slowly, feeling the noodles slide down his pants and stood there awkwardly for a second, unsure what to do. "You want me to undress, don't you?" he asked, all too softly.

"There's always the bathroom," he replied, a note of smugness in his voice that made Chase want to punch him square in the face. "Unless you want to go back to your car looking like this..."

"Well, if I don't undress in front of you, you'll do something else," he huffed. He knew House. He had been working under him for nearly five years now. He knew what he wanted and there was no chance to fight it. He thought briefly if he could get a job at some of the other hospitals, after it went public—if there would be even a chance anyone would want him. "Spray me with something contagious and make me fucking - undress in front of the nurses."

"I was thinking something I'd claim was radioactive," he drawled.

"Shut _up_ ," Chase groaned as he started to work on the buttons of his shirt. House did shut up, amazingly enough, either because of the bite in his voice (uncharacteristic for him) or because he didn't want to interrupt the show of seeing what was so wrong with Chase that he didn't sleep around like the whore he had characterized him as. He finished up unbuttoning his shirt and untucked it. He knew the scars didn't matter anymore, considering what he was going to show him, but he still tried to hide them with his shirt. 

He let out a shaky sigh, fumbling with his belt, his fingers trembling with every movement. He wished there was a way out, but he had no choice but to come out to House. Otherwise, all that would happen would be having to come out at a much more public venue, and that'd be infinitely worse. There was still a small chance House would keep it to himself, wouldn't shout it to the four winds, but he knew that chance was slim as hell. He was sealing his fate there.

He pulled his pants and boxers down and sucked in a breath, looking away from House.

"Oh, is that why you never talk back? Having no balls to speak of?"

He bit back a whimper at that horrible joke but it still fled out of his mouth, and he closed his eyes. He didn't want to see the rejection in his eyes, the way he found his body disgusting. The way it was clear that he didn't have the _typical_ equipment. In fact, he had recently shaved, so there was nothing to be questioned. House could see everything.

"Go on," he said slowly, like it was killing him. And it was. "Ask me how big my chest was before I had my bilateral mastectomy or if I still have pictures from then, preferably nude ones. You can also imply Cameron is secretly a lesbian because she slept with me and—"

"Stop," House cut through, grabbing him by the arm. He nearly jumped and House pulled his hand away. Chase managed to look at him. There was no disgust or rejection in House's eyes—he looked shocked and also regretful. It was a sight to behold, so strange he felt like House had been replaced by a man who looked just like him. Chase's heart hammered away at his chest still, unstoppable, and he resisted the urge to start crying. "Take a shower and get changed. There's still time to watch Sarah's divorce."

Chase stood there. He wanted to take that as an apology, to go on about his life, but he knew it didn't work like that. He knew House was simply shocked and would be up for making jokes any time now. The ammunition of sluttiness would be replaced with jokes about him having a pussy, and it would work like that. He'd have to take it, just like he took the other jokes about people like him, swallowed them up and stopped himself from telling House to stop. It's not like House would've cared, anyway, even if he knew he was trans—jokes were jokes to him, and didn't carry any other importance.

"I'm sorry," House said.

He managed to look at him again. He blinked. "You're sorry you forced me to come out by creating a situation where I'd have to undress in front of you?" 

He shook his head slightly. "No, I mean, yes, I just—" he sucked in a breath. "I didn't think it'd be this. You're my employee. I care about you."

Chase whimpered and nodded numbly before heading toward the bathroom. It was the first time he came to House's place and it would, more likely than not, be the last time he was there. Any chances of fulfilling his dreams of sleeping with him were completely decimated, not that it had many hopes to begin with. But he had to spend that first-and-last night there. It was only a matter of time before House recovered from the shock and he had to deal with the repercussions.

* * *

"Fuck," House exclaimed as soon as Chase was driving away.

He hadn't expected this, of all things. He had thought many things—maybe Chase had a small dick and was embarrassed about it, maybe Chase had scars over his pelvis that spoke to some kind of abuse (that's a theory he had about Rowan). Maybe even Chase was very much into him and they'd sleep together; he had stacked up in condoms and lube just in case that was where the night led them to. And now he had to deal with the fact it wasn't that, or anywhere near that. 

"God fucking dammit," he yelled as he stood up, his leg complaining. Guilt crashed against him in waves, a feeling he wasn't used to in any shape or form. He sucked in a breath and dry swallowed a pill. He'd use two by this hour, but he wanted to stay up and research what Chase had gone through and what it all meant. 

It didn't take long to figure out how much he had fucked up. He read through papers about the surgeries and the hormonal treatment, those were the easiest to digest, and then some on the psychology of it. It wasn't until he came across blog posts from trans people that it hit him just how horrible he had been. From the jokes to forcing Chase to out himself to him in the worst way possible—everything had been horrible. He thought about Chase and how he must have been worried sick for all the years he'd been working under him, hearing his jokes about trans people and thinking that he must hate him. It broke his heart. 

He wanted to talk to Wilson, to _someone_ about this, but he had no one to talk about it to, as he didn't want to out Chase to anyone, of course. The mere idea made him sick—he had to keep Chase's secret, well, secret. He blinked at the words on the laptop screen as they got blurry. He should sleep, but he wanted to keep reading, to keep learning about what Chase had gone through.

He wondered what exactly had Chase gone through. Had his father left because he came out? It would make sense, with the timeline given to him. Fifteen seemed an apt age to come out as transgender. How had his mother dealt with it? Did he get bullied or attacked for it? What did Cameron think about it? She must be okay with it to some degree, considering she hadn't told everyone after their fling. That was why Chase flirted and then dipped, too—he didn't want to have a nurse who didn't accept him know and then have the entirety of the hospital know by the next day.

He had to act like nothing had changed. That was the best way to deal with this. He'd keep making jokes about Chase being a slut and everything would go back to normal. It didn't matter that Chase was trans, and it certainly didn't affect his affection toward him—but he wanted everything go on as it used to be. 

Yes, he would just act like normal.

* * *

"We've got a case," House announced the day afterward. 

Chase stared as he started to write symptoms onto the blackboard. He bit the inside of his cheek, holding his breath. He kept waiting for it to drop. The only person in the room that didn't know he was trans was Foreman, so it was only a matter of time before House joked about it and let him know. Then it would, one way or another, find its way to the nurses and then the rumor mill would be lit on fire. He had called Cameron as soon as he was in his car and had an anxiety attack about it, crying into her side of the line pathetically. She had tried to reassure him that everything would be okay, but the doubt in her voice was obvious.

"Seventeen-year-old girl. High blood pressure, dizziness, fainting, sudden aggression, muscle pain, abnormal liver function results and no menstruation in four months. Pregnancy test was negative. What's on the table, people?"

"Could be a brain tumor," Foreman offered, ever the neurologist, "but it doesn't fit all the symptoms."

"It could be a brain tumor _and_ something else," Cameron piped in, despite their constant arguing about Occam's Razor. She blinked and she looked at Chase as if searching for some sort of reassurance before turning back to House. "If this was a teenage boy I'd ask to check testosterone levels but, considering—"

Chase felt bile rise up his throat. Fuck. Of course House had gotten a trans patient

"Oh," House exclaimed, eyes lighting up when he heard that. "Yes, that makes sense. Maybe she's not a she at all."

Foreman tilted his head, completely oblivious to the way Chase stared at House with wide, pleading eyes. "You're thinking an intersex condition?"

"Could be," House said, "but I'm thinking he may be an idiot and using stretched testosterone he bought on the streets rather than going to an endocrinologist." He huffed. "Of course, his parents may be at fault here as well. The laws are horrible for trans people under eighteen—I wonder how they'll react when they learn their perfect daughter isn't their daughter at all?"

Cameron cleared her throat as Foreman stared at House like he was insane, perhaps mostly because of the accepting tone he had, with no jokes on his tongue. "You think he is a transgender man?" she asked.

"Most likely," he said. "They could also be nonbinary, but I'd be betting on trans man." He looked at Chase and smiled at him in a way he could only describe as gentle. He wanted to throw up—this was when he dropped it, something about him being an inspiration, something about how he had been able to get the idea because of him. "Chase, Cameron, go take his testosterone levels. If they're high as I suspect they will be, start working on the paperwork and breaking it to the parents. With the kid's consent, of course."

Chase suppressed a scream. He wanted to break down right there and then. He nodded and left the room quickly, Cameron trailing behind him. 

He didn't understand why House hadn't joked about it by now, or why he hadn't cracked jokes about their patient's identity, or even looked at him and called him out for looking terrified in the middle of a DDX. The fact Foreman hadn't noticed was a miracle.

He tried to shut off his brain as he went through the process with their patient. It turned out House was right, and he had to deal with the patient's confused yet well meaning parents. Cameron helped him do the paperwork. The day closed out as the hours passed and they all left.

Chase couldn't sleep that night. The idea of the prank House must be preparing kept him awake, gnawing at him. He was going to tell everyone through some grand display—the idea that he was legitimately accepting never occurred to him, and why should it? Everything about House showed that he despised people just like him. When the hours passed and the sun was rising, he stopped trying to sleep and showered, looking paler than ever in the mirror. He got dressed and headed to work way too early.

He got to the differential diagnosis room and was surprised to see House already there; he usually came in at the last minute. He straightened up and stared at him on instinct, before crumbling into a seat.

"You look like shit," House piped up after a few horrible seconds of silence.

He sucked in a breath. "I am aware."

"Did you get any sleep last night? Are you sick or something?"

He made a noise of discomfort. "I'm alright."

"You're clearly not. What bug bit you?"

"I'm okay, House. Just..." He blinked, closed his eyes. He wanted to lay his head on the cool glass of the table. "Whatever you're planning, House, please don't do it."

House stared at him as if he had grown a second head—he wasn't looking at him but he could feel it. "What are you talking about?"

"I know I surprised you two days ago but I didn't mean to and I will quit if you want me to but just don't tell everyone, okay? Please don't tell everyone."

"Chase, I'm not going to tell everyone anything."

"I worked so hard to make sure no one knew, okay? You have no idea. You have no idea how fucking - how fucking hard it is to seal your medical records and delete every trace of your birth name off the Internet." He whimpered. "Please. I will do anything so you don't tell everyone. I know you want to, I mean, you wanted to know why I was like this, and now you know, right?"

"Chase..."

"You can have anything you want," he said. "I will answer every question you ask, I can tell you my birth name and you can call me it in private if you want. You can - you can have pictures before I transitioned. You can examine me." A sob shook out of him. "If you want you can also - you can also fuck me. I know you wanted to sleep with me before and now I'm a freak so, better yet, isn't - isn't it?"

He turned to look at House and flinched when he saw the shock and disgust in his eyes. It had been difficult enough to offer himself as a bargain chip, but to have House act with disgust hurt even more. His head swam and he could feel his breath start to pick up. "Please. Don't tell anyone. I would rather die than go through all that again." The words came out choked, as he struggled to speak through the tightness in his chest.

 _Anxiety attack_ , his brain supplied even as the world swam in front of him. 

"Chase!" House exclaimed.

A steadying hand around his waist. Blood rushing through his ears. His heart hammering away. Sweat coating his face and body, sticking to his clothes. His body colliding against the table as House held him up in a folding position as he shook. Tears sliding down his cheek. A hand rubbing circles on his upper back.

"Breathe slowly. In and out."

He followed the instructions even though it felt like they were killing him. He slowly started to go back to normal, his heart rate climbing down as he stopped crying. 

"Well done," House muttered, and Chase let out a hysterical little laugh at the absurdity of those two words. Maybe now House had seen just how pathetic his employee truly was and it would be enough for him to pity him, to make him not tell everyone. 

He uncurled himself from the position he was put into and stood up with shaky legs, staring at his own feet instead of looking at House. He kept his hand on the table to steady himself. He should not have gone through his idea of begging House for mercy with every bargain chip he could think of after a sleepless night, but he wasn't able to stop himself when House was in front of him when no one else was at work yet.

And now...

"I'm so sorry, Chase."

Chase snapped his head up, eyes widening as he looked into House's eyes. He looked guilt-ridden, grief-stricken, even. It was an odd sight. "What are you sorry for?" He realized what he could mean as soon as the words left his mouth. "You already told people, didn't you?"

* * *

House was not prone to feeling guilt. But there, when Chase accused him of that, he felt like the worst person in the world. He had never been close to Chase, never really pranked him beyond mean jokes, but he had probably taken some ideas off how he joked and pranked Wilson. He wanted to cry, even though the mere idea didn't come naturally to him—he couldn't believe Chase could think he would do something so cruel.

"I didn't tell anyone you're transgender," House replied softly, and Chase let out a relieved breath that made him feel even worse. He deserved it, anyway. "I also never planned on outing you. Hell, I also don't want to prank you or mock you... at least not for anything that has to do with your gender identity." Chase's eyes were hopeful yet wary, the way he stared at him like a cat ready to run at the first sign of danger. "Why do you believe that I would do such things to you?"

Chase sucked in a breath, slowly settled on the table. "You're a notorious asshole," he said, as if explaining two plus two to him. "You mock me for just about everything. And you broadcasted the fact I was a 'whore', enough to ask every other nurse about if I had slept with them. And with your - your track record of transphobic jokes I don't think it's that big of a stretch to think you'd... be horrible about that."

House swallowed around the lump in his throat. The truth hurt: Chase was right on every count of why he thought he would tell everyone that he was trans. Not to mention the transphobic jokes, which he had no idea how to properly apologize for. He pictured Chase after the case with the intersex model, unable to sleep because he thought he would hate his guts if he ever knew the truth. "But," he tried, "have I treated you differently since I found out? Did I do something wrong? The timing of our last patient was unfortunate, I'll agree, but I sent you there with Cameron because I wanted it to be easier for him, and because I assumed Foreman has no idea."

He huffed. "Yeah, the patient timing was unfortunate," he agreed. He fiddled with his hands. "It's stupid but I saw you do this thing where you were perfectly nice to Wilson for a few days, like _weirdly_ nice, and after a while you did a hospital-wide prank on him. So when you did not ask a single thing I thought...."

"You thought I was planning some big, horrible prank and just letting you think you were safe."

He had, in fact, followed that strategy multiple times with Wilson. Again, the truth hurt.

"This sucks," House exclaimed as he settled on the chair Chase had his anxiety attack in. He didn't know if there was a way to fix everything that had gone wrong, and if Chase felt it in his best interest to leave the hospital, he would let him go gladly, even write a letter of recommendation. But he had to try. "I swear on my damn leg, I would never out you to anyone with or without a prank. I'm already sorry for leaving you no choice but to come out to me in such a humiliating manner and for saying all those horrible fucking jokes about trans people. I understand why you didn't feel safe to come out to me or to anyone in the hospital. But especially me. I'm just not trustworthy."

* * *

Chase stared at him for a few seconds as his sleepless brain tried to process what he was saying. House was being sincere—he could tell by then, having worked for him for almost five years, and there was not a single hint of lying on his voice. He had made a complete fool of himself, and he felt a little guilty, albeit he didn't think anyone could fault him for going straight to catastrophizing the event in the worst ways possible.

He swallowed.

"So... you did your research on gender identity to understand my situation?"

It made more sense, now that he thought about it.

"Yes, I was curious." He could hear the grin on House's voice as he looked back away. "And I didn't want to make you more uncomfortable after all of... _that_."

Bile rose up Chase's throat at the reminder of that night. He had been so terrified then, shaking imperciptibly as he kept watching Real Housewives with House. He had lost his mind as soon as he got into the car, and he could only think about how House _saw_ him, saw his body, every last inch of what made him himself. "I'm sorry I expected the worst of you," he said, even though he felt like it was almost warranted. He swallowed and decided to give him a juicy morsel of the other issue House had always been bothering him on. "My father left because I came out. School wasn't much better. My teenage years were the worst shit I've ever experienced."

He could feel House's eyes on him, gaze burning into his skin. He wanted to turn around, to see if he pitied him or felt guilty, but the mere idea of seeing pity in his eyes only made him more uncomfortable, so he kept staring at the floor.

"That's why you said it."

House sounded emotional, an odd thing to hear from the timbre of his voice. But Chase was certain of it—the way his voice shook was tell-tale of someone who was about to cry. 

"I said many things," he replied, trying to sound light. Humorous, even. He let out a quiet chuckle that was completely devoid of mirth. "I didn't want to disgust you by offering sex, by the way. I was... kind of desperate." He let out another humorless laugh that nearly turned into a sob. He had put so much of himself there, by offering to let House take him so he wouldn't tell everyone. He could almost see the scene when he closed his eyes, House's gaze eating him up as he pulled his pants down. It reminded him of his father. He tried to shut it down, pull off the memories that haunted him. He had no plans of telling House about _that_ part of Rowan leaving him and his mother—he could be sated with just that.

"You're right," House said. Chase resisted the urge to flinch. "I was repulse when you offered for me to fuck you."

He felt tears prick at his eyes and he got off the table. He cleared his throat. "Sure," he said. "I need to go do clinic duty, so if you'll excuse me..."

He started to walk out of the room when House grabbed him by the wrist firmly.

"House," he said softly. "Please. I get that you won't out me and that you won't fire me or anything although you find my body repulsive." He sucked in a breath, all sorts of shaky. "It's fine. I get it. I..."

House let out an exasperated sigh. "You are such an idiot, blondie," he told him as he got up. "Look at me, Chase."

He turned slightly but he couldn't bear to look at House. What was he going to say? What was he possibly going to say? All the ideas he had were horrible. He just wanted to get himself back together before Foreman and Cameron got there and they had to go back to normal. 

"Robert," House said. 

Chase looked up at him in surprise at the use of his first name. He had _never_ heard his first name in House's mouth, that he could recall, beyond formalities during his interview. He saw House's gaze, full of so many things he never thought he'd see in those icy blue eyes. Self-loathing, anxiety, hesitance, maybe even a bit of amusement and that hard-headed determination that made House who he was.

"I could never be repulsed by you or your body," he said so softly it felt like Cameron had possessed him. Chase stared. "I was repulsed by the idea of taking you when your consent would be so compromised. Of being such a terrible person that you thought me capable to rape you."

He shuddered. He thought of his father. Parting gifts and whatnot. He shut that out as fast as he could, focusing on the present moment.

"I have always been attracted to you, as I'm sure you could guess by all the jokes I threw about you being pretty." He let out a quiet laugh. "Of course, I didn't want HR on my tail."

Chase found in himself enough strength to retort, "Like you don't have it on your tail enough with the shit you say to Cuddy."

House laughed again. "Exactly." He tilted his head, put his hand on Chase's cheek. He was warm. "I didn't want to scare you off, though. I know Cuddy can deal with me, but I didn't know if you could. The way—I'd love to say I've just wanted to fuck you into the mattress so I don't have to hear your stupid accent anymore, but I would be lying."

Chase's eyes widened a modicum. If House returned his feelings, he had always assumed it would only be the sexual part of them. That even after all this House and him could have a one-night stand and forget about it. "You're saying you—?"

"Yes," House said gravely. "Again. I understand this is a lot to deal with and you can leave the hospital if you don't feel safe with this, I'll write you a letter of recommendation, anything you want, but—I needed you to know that. After all I hurt you these last two days, it only seemed fair." He deflated, clearly tired out from the mere acknowledgment of the fact he was a person with feelings. He looked like he aws waiting for Chase to say just as he suggested, ask for a letter of recommendation and get going.

Nothing could be farther from the truth than that.

"House," he said quietly. "Could I kiss you?"

Now it was House's turn for his eyes to widen. He looked at him. "Are you sure? You've had a hell of a time these last few days, your emotions are running high, you're exhausted and you're not thinking logically—"

"House," he insisted, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt. "Could I kiss you?" He scrambled toward his lap, settling there, straddling him. 

"Yes," he replied, breathless.

Chase kissed him then. House's stubble itched against his clean-shaven chin, but it didn't matter. The kiss was gentle yet firm, Chase's hand gripping at the back of House's neck for support. When he pulled away, both of their pupils were blown wide.

"I have been crushing on you for... years," Chase breathed out. "Only reason I've stuck around so long. I've always wanted to date you. So, please... I know what I want. It's about what you want."

"I do want that," House replied, a hand hesitantly wrapping around Chase's slim waist. "But I am horrible at relationships. And I hurt you horribly less than forty-eight hours ago. How can you know that you're not simply reacting with the fawn trauma response—"

He kissed him again. "Shut _up_ ," he groaned into his mouth.

" _Chase! House! What the Hell is going on?!_ "

Chase nearly jumped out of House's lap at the sound of Cameron's voice, turning to see her and Foreman standing by the door of the diagnostics room.

"Uh." He cleared his throat. "Well." He turned to Foreman. "Can we explain?"

"Everything?" House said. "If Foreman says anything I'll beat him with my cane."

"Of _course_ I'll say something, boss-employee relationships could get the hospital in serious—"

"Not about _that_!" Chase exclaimed. "Long story. Come on, we'll tell you about it." He carefully slid off House's lap and settled on the chair next to him.

House offered him his hand and he held it.

Not everything was okay. Things weren't going to be completely okay for a while. But he knew now that things were looking up, and that everything wasn't as horrible as he had thought it would be only a few hours earlier.

"Cameron knows half of this, but I still think I need to fill you all in. So, Foreman, House got curious..."


End file.
